GORKY is still the greatest literary representative of revolutionary Russia. Born of the people, and having experienced in his own person their wrongs, their sufferings and their misery, he was enabled by his extraordinary genius to voice their grievances and their aspirations for a better life as no mere intellectual could. His success was instantaneous, and when the Russian people rose in rebellion against their oppressors in 1905, he was the stormy petrel of the Revolution, the evangel who, in thunderous notes, and in words that all the masses could understand, proclaimed the glad tidings of the new hoped-for freedom. His latest autobiographical works show that his pen has lost none of its old cunning, that he has retained in full his revolutionary ardor and aggressive fighting spirit for the cause of human liberty, and that maturity, while mellowing his creative genius, also intensified and strengthened it.

The stories contained in this volume are among the very best of his writings.